Corruption
by ninemelodies
Summary: He scrolled through the list, noting that once again, everyone was there. Frustrated he slapped his hand on the keyboard. The computer let out a loud beep in protest, and a file titled XIV popped up. "Fourteen?" Roxas questioned, already reaching forward to open the file. "There was no fourteenth member."


"So, how did you manage to make me my own person? I thought it wasn't possible?"

"For the last time Roxas, I _don't know._ " Sora huffed in annoyance, pausing to jump onto the ledge in front of him. He hauled himself up and turned to grab Roxas's hand. "Dude, you're heavy," he complained, digging his heels in and leaning back.

"Shut up!" Roxas snapped, scrambling to get purchase on the ledge with the toes of his sneakers. Using his other hand, the blond pulled himself up on the ledge. "Why are we out here anyways?" He asked in between breaths.

"I've got something to show you," Sora answered, already up and examining the cliff face in front of him. "I think you'll like it." He ran his hand over the wall, like he was looking for something. "I found it one day while I was out exploring. You know that hole besides the castle I showed you?" Roxas gave a grunt in agreement. "Well it led to this place called the Garden of Assemblage."

"What makes you think I'll like that place?" By now Roxas had caught his breath and had made his way to stand beside Sora. He watched the brunette continue to comb the wall with a look of mild amusement. "What are you doing?"

"You'll see!" With a surprised yelp, Sora suddenly disappeared into a seemingly normal section of the wall.

"Sora!"

"I'm fine!" To prove his point, Sora poked his head through. "C'mon, the Garden is through here." He vanished through the portal again, expecting Roxas to follow. After a moment's hesitation, the blond walked through the portal as well.

On the other side of the wall he was greeted with a computer like device sticking up from the center of a circle. Walls circled him in, and a set of stairs led to a walkway along the top of the circle. "So why is it called a Garden?" Roxas asked, running his hand along the wall as he walked beside it. "It doesn't look like a garden." He made his way to the stairs and began to climb them. Once he reached the top, he realized what the shapes were that he had seen. They seemed to be connected to the dead Organization members, but how and why? "Sora?" He called, looking down to where the brunette was fiddling with the computer. "What are these?"

"Huh?" Sora looked up at his name. He was confused until he realized what Roxas was looking at. "Oh, those." He looked back down at the computer. "They're entrances to battles. Like data battles." Sora smacked the computer in front of him. "This computer apparently has data on all the Org members, and when you go through those portals, you can fight that data as much as you want. It eerie how much they're like the original people."

Roxas's eyes flicked to the 8th member's battle entrance. "Do they talk?"

"Like actual conversations?" Sora shook his head. "No, but after you start the battle they do their normal battle taunts. Do you _know_ how many times I had to hear 'dance water dance' before I finally managed to beat Demyx's data battle?" Roxas looked surprised by this news. "Oh, the data versions are much stronger than the people were. And in battle, you don't die, but if you get hit enough, the computer will take you out of the fight and put you back in the Garden." Sora looked back towards the entrance like someone was calling him. "Hey, I got to go check on something." He walked through the wall before sticking his head back in to look at Roxas. "See ya!" He yelled before vanishing.

Roxas simply shook his head at the brunette before walking back down the stairs. This place was so strange. Why had someone been collecting data of them? Sora had said it was all the members, so that meant he had to have a data battle around here too. One quick examination told him that he was correct in his assumption. His eyes locked on the doors at the top of the stairs. Yes, all the Organization members were here, but why was there something nagging at Roxas telling him that they weren't. Someone was missing. Standing in the center of the pit area, Roxas began to count.

No one could be missing. There were thirteen entrances and thirteen members. So then why wouldn't that feeling go away. Unsure of what else to do, he turned to the computer Sora had been messing with. He scrolled through the list, noting that once again, everyone was there. Frustrated he slapped his hand on the keyboard. The computer let out a loud beep in protest, and a file titled XIV popped up.

"Fourteen?" Roxas questioned, already reaching forward to open the file. "There was no fourteenth member." The statement came out more like a question. He knew that there wasn't a fourteenth member. That's why they had been called Organization XIII. He _was_ the last member. He was the keyblade wielder they had sought for. Once they had him, there hadn't been the need for another member. But once again, something was telling him he was wrong. That something was missing, that there was a hole in his memories.

The computer spoke, drawing him out of his thoughts. "Restoration at 50%."

Restoration of what? Had the file he clicked on been deleted, and if so, why had it been deleted? Why would someone who so meticulously collected data on the members delete the file of an apparent fourteenth member? It didn't make any sense.

The computer spoke again. "Restoration at 75%."

A sound began to fill the small area Roxas was standing in. He could feel the floor underneath his feet rumble slightly as the noise got louder and louder. It sounded like the noise he remembered from his TV in the virtual Twilight Town. The buzzing, head stuffed with cotton kind of sound, white noise.

Nervous he backed up from the computer, only to realize that the white noise was coming from the top of the stairs. The two doors that had been there were slowly being consumed by the black and white squares that were associated with white noise. The more they spread, the louder the noise got. When the doors were completely gone, the noise stopped, leaving a deafening silence behind. In the absence of the buzz, the computer spoke again. "Restoration at 100%. File recovered. XIV."

Still on edge, Roxas cautiously walked up the stairs. He stopped on the landing, staring up at the giant staticy thing before him. He had no idea what it was. There was a real chance it was a portal to yet another data battle that had been buried in the dregs of the computer. Deleted from the Garden but not fully wiped from the system. He reached towards it, hesitating just slightly before finally resting his hand against the surface.

From the appearance, he expected it to feel like it was moving. He was not expecting it to be solid. He pushed harder, jumping back when the computer spoke again. "Would you like to fight XIV?"

"Yes," Roxas replied automatically.

"Please wait." There was a pause. "Fight is prepared. Step through the portal." And so Roxas did, unaware of the computer chanting out a warning behind him. "Warning, data corrupt. Warning, data corrupt."

On the other side of the portal, Roxas was shielding his eyes from the light. Slowly the world around him was being formed. When he could finally see, he gasped. He was in Twilight Town, walking on an invisible floor just above the clock tower entrance. In front of him, a figure was forming. It was a suit of armor, about the same height as Roxas.

All of this was familiar to Roxas. He had the nagging feeling he had done all of this before, had fought this person standing in front of him before, had won. A tear trailed its way down his cheek and he reached a hand up to brush it off, unsure why the thought of beating this person made him unbearably sad. Shaking his head, he summoned Oathkeeper and Oblivion, ready to beat this person once again. Maybe it would bring back those missing memories.

By now the figure was fully formed, but it hadn't moved to attack Roxas. It just stood there, staring in his general direction. "Roxas," it breathed with a voice like the wind. "Roxas," the figure said again, voice getting louder. That white noise sound was coming back, but this time it was inside his head. He dropped a keyblade, the now empty hand reaching up to clutch at blond hair. His head _hurt._ His head was pounding, like something inside was trying to escape, trying its hardest to get him to pay attention to it, to remember what he had forgotten.

"Who am I, Roxas?" The figure asked. "Do you remember me, Roxas?" Each word the figure spoke sent a stabbing pain through Roxas's head.

Images flashed through his mind, sitting on the clock tower, eating ice cream. Sunset watching and laughter mixed in with the bickering of three friends. The icing on the cake that Axel had shown him, he had shown to another. What was their name? What did they look like? _Why couldn't he remember?_ It felt like someone had gone through his life like a collection of photographs, and in each one, they had scribbled out the third person's face with a ball point pen.

"I don't…I don't know!" He yelled into the silence, "I want to remember! I know you were there, but _who are you?_ "

The figure sighed and the wind around them picked up. The world around them jumped, like a glitch in a video game. When it settled back into a normal state, they were above the clock tower, looking down at all of the virtual Twilight Town. "This data," the figure began. Halfway through the word data, the figures voice shifted to that of Vexen's. "Was never meant to be here!" The figure took a step towards Roxas. "Puppet," it said. "Puppet. Puppet. Puppet." With each repetition the figure cycled through the voices of the other member's, finally landing on one that didn't belong to any of the other members. "Just a puppet."

With those last three words, something in Roxas's mind clicked. All the ballpoint pen that had been obscuring the third person's face was removed, and finally, he _remembered._ "Xion!" He yelled. He was already running forward, feet moving without his knowledge. Though whether he going was to fight or hug the data version of his forgotten friend he didn't know. The figure's armor had dissolved, leaving a person in a black coat in its wake. A gust of wind blew the person's hood back, revealing the face of the girl Roxas could now remember.

"Xion," he muttered, slowing to a stop within arm's reach of the other.

Xion moved slowly. She lifted her arm up from her side, moving it so that it pointed at Roxas. A flash of light and suddenly there was a keyblade in her hand.

Roxas remembered everything. He remembered fighting all the different forms of Xion throughout the worlds, finally ending it all in Twilight Town upon the clock tower where they had spent much of their friendship. He remembered watching her fade, watching as she turned into ice and vanished into the wind. He remembered the anger, the anger at not remembering, at the Organization, at everyone. "Xion," he whispered, voice carried away by the steadily rising wind. "I'm sorry."

Xion didn't say anything, just stared at him with blank eyes. Roxas had to remind himself this was only a data version. This wasn't Xion, would never be Xion. Even so, when the data version of his friend finally did move to attack him, he couldn't bring himself to fight back. He deflected every blow, dodged every lighting strike, but never could he bring himself to fight back. He had already done so once, at the cost of his memories and his friend's life.

"Goodbye, Roxas." Xion landed one final hit on him, and the world fuzzed out.

He woke up in the Garden at the bottom of the stairs. The doors had returned, the portal to Xion's fight was gone. What had the point of that been? Sora had said that you could fight the data as much as you wanted, so why had Xion's portal vanished. Was it because it was never meant to exist in the first place?

Even now, thinking back on the entire thing, it seemed like a hazy dream. Maybe he had just fallen and cracked his head on the stairs. Maybe doing so had opened the locked memories in his mind and he just dreamt up everything that had just transpired. He stood up slowly, nearly falling as a wave of dizziness over took him. A hand on the wall steadied him as the wave passed.

After resting, Roxas decided to try his hand at the other fights. Maybe it would him clear out the remaining fog from his mind. He decided to start with Axel, if for any other reason than a selfish desire to see the redhead again. He walked over to the portal and put his hand against it.

"Do you wish to fight Axel?" The computerized voice jumped on Axel's name. For a second, Roxas almost swore it was Xion who had spoken.

"Yes."

"Please wait." There was a pause. "Fight is prepared. Step through the portal." Without any hesitation, Roxas did so.

This time the battle was taking place in the basement of the Twilight Town mansion. A ring of fire already marked out the arena, trapping him inside and blocking any hopes of having escaping room.

Axel formed in front of him, already slouched into his traditional fighting pose. He swung his chakrams between his fingers lazily, like he had been waiting for Roxas for ages. "It's about time." Roxas started when Axel spoke. Once again, the data battles were speaking to him when Sora had said they wouldn't. "I told you," said the data Axel, "I'll always be there to bring you back."

Then the data Axel charged, and it was all Roxas could do to win the battle without losing all of his hair to Axel's erratic fire attacks. When Roxas landed the final hit, he could swear the data Axel spoke to him again, but with a different, more feminine. "Goodbye, Roxas." Then his surroundings had fuzzed out and he was deposited back at the bottom of the stairs.

Something was nagging at Roxas, telling him to beat all of the data battles, just to see if they all ended the same way. Data Demyx had spoken to him just like Axel had. The data version of the 9th member of the Organization had gotten a small smile when it saw Roxas. Then it had told him, "Glad you're back," before launching into the never ending onslaught of geysers and water clones.

Not all of them had something to say to him. Mainly it was the ones he had actually bothered to try and interact with. Data Xigbar had called him kiddo, but all the fights ended with the data versions of the members saying, "Goodbye, Roxas," in a voice that was not their own. Now, with the last battle done, he stood in front of the computer, trying to see if he could get Xion's portal back.

As he went through the files, he couldn't help but notice that all the other Organization member's files seemed different somehow, as if someone, or _something,_ was influencing them. When he clicked on Axel's file, a message popped up in the middle of the screen. "Warning, file corrupt," Roxas read to himself. None of these files had been corrupt beforehand, so what had changed?

"Xion," he whispered to himself, rushing to find her missing file again. "I loaded her data. It must be her data influencing all of these." Suddenly, the computer shut down, and Roxas could see his own reflection in the glass. Something shifted in the reflection, and Roxas moved closer, trying to see what it was. The closer he got, the more his reflection changed, until he realized that he was no longer looking at himself, but Xion.

"You've corrupted the data, Roxas," Xion spoke, watching him from inside the computer. Her eyes seemed softer than they were in the battle. "I was never supposed to be in here. That's why Vexen deleted me."

"But I brought you back. So what? It shouldn't have changed anything." Roxas's voice turned bitter. "It's just data. _You're just data."_

Xion smiled sadly, but nodded in agreement. "When you remembered me, remembered her, you were inside the data. At that point, you were data. Those memories of me, and of the others, got released." She spread her arms wide, as if gesturing to everything inside the computer. "All those files in here got corrupted by your memories. That's why they spoke to you. Somehow, you made them all slightly more than just data. That includes me, I'm about as real as Xion was," she saw the smile start to spread across Roxas's face and she interjected quickly, "but, I'm not her."

"Roxas!" Sora called, startling the blond. "You've been here all day, are you still alive?"

Roxas looked up from the screen to glance at Sora, and when he looked back, Xion was gone. He turned around, "Yes, Sora, I am still alive."

"Good!" Sora marched over and took Roxas by the arm, "Aerith made dinner and invited us over." Not bothering to see if Roxas had any complaints, he began hauling him towards the exit. He paused just before the walking through the exit. "Something seems different about this place…" he muttered, looking around. Finally his gaze landed on Roxas and his grin was back full force. "So, did you like it?"

"Yeah, thank you."


End file.
